In off-the-road vehicles where rough terrain is frequently traveled, it is often-times desirable to provide a headlamp retainer assembly that has a substantial amount of resiliency to prevent damage to the headlamp and also to prevent loosening of the parts in the headlamp assembly. There have been many such designs provided in the past but these have to a large extent been confined to retaining assemblies for circular, rather than rectangular headlamps. One such design is shown in the Mead et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,065,340 in which the circular headlamp is supported in a circular annular support connected by an integral annular web portion to a substantially fixed base portion. This construction has the disadvantage that it is not readily adaptable with a device for adjusting the vertical angular position of the headlamp which is desirable in many applications.
Attempts to make shock mounted circular headlamp retainer assemblies adjustable have resulted in very complicated and costly constructions. For example, in the Goodyear et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,852,586, a shock mounting arrangement is provided for a circular headlamp assembly that includes two annular metal retaining cups that engage the headlamp and an isolated circular rubber grommet that provides the necessary pivotal action for vertical adjustment of the headlamp. The disadvantage in this construction, in addition to requiring very many separately formed parts, is that it does not provide the necessary support for the headlamp because of the very small rubber grommet between the fixed portion of the assembly and the pivotal retaining cups.
It is a primary object of the present invention to ameliorate these problems noted above in prior art shock headlamp retainer assemblies.